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TEFL Articles

TEFL Articles

Welcome to TEFL Articles, where you’ll find articles, essays, ideas and tips of special interest to teachers of English. If you have any articles that you would like to see on TEFL.net, please feel free to submit them. Also check out the TEFL Articles Archives for earlier material. You can browse articles by topic on the left. Latest articles are shown below.

2 January 2010 by Shelley Vernon | Filed under Teacher Technique | 2 Comments »

Respect is a two way street

A large part of ESL classroom management starts with respect; and that is a two-way street, where you respect each other. Management of disrespectful children is difficult enough, let alone with a language barrier, but if you handle yourself with calm and authority you will be on the right road without having to resort to
Read on »

8 November 2009 by Sharon De Hinojosa | Filed under Career | 9 Comments »

Giving a workshop at a teacher training event such as a conference can be a great way to boost your CV, to network and to learn more about a particular teaching idea. While presenting a workshop in front of 20 other teachers can seem daunting, if you follow the tips below you’ll find that it’s not as hard as you thought.
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3 October 2009 by Alex Case | Filed under YL | 7 Comments »

Can-do statements are all the rage in English teaching due to the ever increasing influence of the ALTE/ CEF levels, but they are probably least used in the kinds of classes where they could be most useful- with the under 5s. Creating can-do statements for your present or future classes has many potential benefits:

  • Providing a structure to classes that have no textbook
  • Giving motivation to teachers who feel their students are progressing slowly compared to older students- especially in areas like grammar and in
    Read on »
3 October 2009 by Alex Case | Filed under YL | 2 Comments »

Pre-school English classes often raise particular challenges that are not nearly so frequent even in primary schools, such as children studying English for the first time, the school offering English classes for the first time, classes for as little as an hour a week, and a wide range of approaches to teaching and types of classroom. Many of these potential difficulties can be dealt with in advance by school managers, teachers in the kindergarten, teachers from outside, or managers of organisations providing teachers to kindergartens asking themselves or others the questions below. Please note that there are far too many questions below for you to be able to ask them all at once! Many of these questions are things that vary from country to
Read on »

1 October 2009 by Tara Benwell | Filed under Using English Club | 3 Comments »

EC ChatWhy use a chat room?
While chat rooms may seem like a thing of the past due to the popularity of social networks and blogs, they are still popular and useful for English Language Learners and Teachers. Teachers have various reasons for encouraging students to use chat rooms. Some teachers offer chat as an optional activity for extra credit while others include it as a compulsory component to a course. Here are a few reasons to use chat rooms with your class:
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27 September 2009 by Alex Case | Filed under Internet | 3 Comments »

I started my blog just over two years ago, and in that time the internet has gone from a place for EFL teachers to go for a few additional ideas or to kill time to something that many teachers can’t live without. The quality of published materials in magazines and books is still generally higher, but nowadays many of the major TEFL magazines and journals are anyway available online with additional features such as being easily searchable and with access to back issues (e.g. ELT Journal, EL Gazette). You can also read and easily search through at least extracts of many books through http://books.google.com and there are even a few freely downloadable books (e.g. OUP Applied Linguistics downloads). There are also free
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21 September 2009 by Alex Case | Filed under Internet | 7 Comments »

The quantity and quality of printable teaching materials on the internet is starting to reach the level of books in both quality and quantity, with the added advantages of being accessible without leaving your home or seat in the teachers’ room and most of the materials being free. Unfortunately, not every online search for worksheets turns out quite as well as that might sound, with search results often leading to out of date or disappeared pages, bad materials, lengthy registration processes or even requests for money. The following tips should make turning to the internet for handouts just as reliable and painless as turning to Reward Resource Packs or Communication Games. The ideas will also
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20 July 2009 by Alex Case | Filed under Lexis | 8 Comments »

1. Really learn a little vocabulary

This is perhaps what is most typically seen as good practice in ELT (English Language Teaching) – picking what language you want the students to learn (or letting them pick it themselves) from word lists, the textbooks, authentic texts etc and revising it various fun ways until they know it thoroughly and are likely to remember it for quite some time to come. Learning it thoroughly nowadays means not just remembering the meaning but also common collocations, pronunciation, different parts of speech, level of formality etc. Ways of practising it until they are ready to remember it include sticking to one topic for a few lessons in the hope that the same vocabulary comes up again and again, giving
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10 July 2009 by Tara Benwell | Filed under Classroom Solutions | 1 Comment »

A Complaint Free WorldThis classroom solution was inspired by #41 on Alex Case’s Cheat List for TEFL Bloggers: 101 easy TEFL blog posts

What complaints do you typically hear from learners?

I hate grammar.
I feel sick.
This is too hard.
I don’t understand.
I miss my boyfriend.
Read on »

29 June 2009 by Tara Benwell | Filed under Using English Club | Leave a Comment »
The Learning English Video Project - series of 7 short videos about ESL learning around the world, complete with classroom and self-study materials

The Learning English Video Project - series of 7 short videos about ESL learning around the world, complete with classroom and self-study materials

You’ve seen the promos, you’ve watched the films, you’ve even met the director. Now, how do you use The Learning English Video Project in the classroom?

Whether you are an online facilitator, an EFL tutor, or a teacher in a foreign country, there are plenty of ways to use EnglishClub.com’s FREE film series both in class and online.

Reasons to use The Learning English Video Project in your school:

  • learners enjoy being part of a collective international voice
  • the films motivate learners to achieve goals as other real people have done
    Read on »